I have just finished a
series of posts
outlining the basis of quantum field theory. These posts offer a basic and
simplified (albeit not simple) outline of the scientific basis of my work.
It is important to understand them, because everything else that I do builds on that.
In the last of those posts,
I suggested that Quantum physics was broadly consistent with Aristotelian
metaphysics. Not completely consistent, of course: we have to make some
modifications to Aristotle's world-view, most importantly his reluctance
to view physics mathematically (although, to be fair to him, the
mathematics needed to represent causality and space and time is well
beyond what was available in his time). I don't adopt Aristotle because I
respect his authority; I adopt him because he is close to what I need.
Why re-invent the philosophical wheel, when most of the work has already
been done, and it just needs to be refined?

I take two things as axiomatic:

We need metaphysics if we are to make sense of the world. Metaphysics is
the glue that holds philosophy together. It is what connects the
philosophy of science with the more practical aspects of philosophy such
as ethics and natural theology. Without a good metaphysics, our knowledge
of the universe will reach a point with a black knight standing over a bridge saying
none shall pass. We seek to be constrained only be natural limits,
if there are any, not self-imposed ones.

Our metaphysics needs to be grounded in and consistent with our
philosophy of science. Especially the philosophy of physics. Even more
especially the philosophy of fundamental physics. The reason for this
is that it is in fundamental physics that science and philosophy meet.
After all (speaking a little naively and simplistically, but more
precise speech would just add details that don't deflect from the
conclusion), theoretical biology builds on theoretical bio-chemistry
(and some physics);
that is where the basic premises of modern biology are taken from
(albeit confirmed and tested against experiment).
Bio-chemistry takes its premises from chemistry. Chemistry from atomic
physics; atomic physics from nuclear physics and quantum electrodynamics;
nuclear physics and quantum electrodynamics from the standard model of
particle physics. The standard model, it is to be hoped, can be deduced
directly from a unified theory of quantum physics and gravity. Maybe
there are some other layers of science beyond that; maybe there aren't,
but sooner or later we are going to reach the most fundamental level of
physics. So where can the premises of fundamental physics be derived
from? The standard answer to that is metaphysics.

Even if you say that the premises behind theoretical physics are a brute
fact; just the way the world happens to be, you are still engaging in
metaphysics. Not a particularly well thought-out or satisfying metaphysics,
but still metaphysics.

So metaphysics provides the premises behind fundamental physics. But it
also provides us with the premises behind ethics, natural theology,
epistemology, the
debates over realism and conceptualism, political theory, artistic
theory and so on, and the rest of philosophy. Thus metaphysics provides
the link between our philosophy of science and everything else.

So one plan is to induce the correct metaphysics from physics, and from
that deduce everything else about the world. Of course, that plan goes
a bit too far. Firstly, it ignores the importance of experimental and
observational evidence in the various other fields of study. Secondly,
there is no reason why our metaphysics should be solely informed by our
physics, and nothing else. We use all the information we have. But there
is still a grain of truth in the proposal. Our metaphysics needs to
be consistent with our physics. Our metaphysics also needs to be
consistent with our natural theology, and our natural theology with our
revealed theology (if we have one).

Many atheists claim that their belief is only a negative one; they
disbelieve in God (for whatever reason). I disagree; for atheism is
either a positive statement that the true metaphysics of reality is one
of those that is logically consistent and excludes the existence of
a deity, or it slips into incoherence. There are, of course, many
different types of atheism and many different types of atheist philosophy.
The ones I want to concentrate on here are those that justify themselves,
in whole or in part, on the belief that science and religion are
incompatible.

Now there are certain tensions between some aspects of science and
beliefs of particular religions -- for example, concerning the
compatibility between evolutionary theory or cosmology and the opening
chapters of the book of Genesis, or the archaeology of the exodus, conquest,
or united monarchy. And these subjects are important, and worth
looking at in detail, but not today. Because they are not disputes between science
and theism in general, but science and one particular branch of theism.
Such issues are not enough grounds for accepting atheism, because there are
other branches of theism where there is no conflict (if indeed there is a
conflict between between biology, cosmology and archaeology and all forms
of Christianity).

The real area of dispute is a matter of metaphysics. For the atheists
claim to have a "scientific" metaphysics, and that belief in God is either
inconsistent with that metaphysics or redundant. For example, the
claim is not that the process of gradual change of species or natural
selection is by itself inconsistent with the existence of God. The claim
is that such an explanation of the origin of life makes God and
theological claims redundant. "We have a scientific explanation of the
origin of life, and therefore we don't need God to explain it." That
therefore
hides away a whole bunch of metaphysical assumptions about the nature of
science. The theist will
look at the same theories, and say "We have a scientific explanation of
the origin of life, and therefore that confirms how God did it."
For the theist, science is the description of how God sustains the world.
A scientific explanation is a theological explanation.
No less than,
but also no more than, the atheist statement, that therefore
relies on a whole bunch of metaphysical assumptions concerning the
nature of physics. The conflict is not between science and religion,
but between various metaphysical assumptions which the atheist claims
are induced from science combined with the science.

But here is the key point. The theist also has his metaphysics. If he is
sensible about it (and I will admit that many, perhaps most, theists
aren't, but a few are, just like most atheists aren't so secure in their
own metaphysics, albeit that some are), his metaphysics will also be
(in part) induced
from science. And he will look at the scientific evidence, interpret it
through his philosophy, and will claim that it is in fact atheism that is
in conflict with science. Each of them accept the same scientific theories
and evidence. There is no difference in the science. The difference is in
the different "scientific" philosophies.

In the high medieval period (around the thirteenth and early fourteenth
centuries), the situation was clearer. There was
a fully logically consistent world-view which embraced the best
science of their day and the best theology. Indeed, there were strong
arguments used to demonstrate that atheism was inconsistent with their
science, since what was believed to be the only possible workable
philosophy of science directly implied
theism. That philosophy was derived from Aristotle's, but considerably
refined and improved from the times of classical Greece.

The same period saw the first stirrings of experimental and mathematical
physics. It was the time when Aristotle's physics (especially his
dynamics, kinematics and cosmology) was first challenged; velocity,
acceleration and things such as magnetic force, optics and temperature
were first expressed mathematically and geometrically; and theories of
impetus and force were first used to try to overcome the deficiencies of
Aristotle's physics. Those early mathematical natural philosophers from
BradwardinetoBuridan and
Oresme
laid much of the ground-work for the
scientific
revolution of the sixteenth century. It was their textbooks that Galileo
taught and was inspired by in his early career.

The time was also a period of great technological advancement. One of the
inventions of the late middle ages was the mechanical clock, with its
regular motions carefully controlled by a series of weights and pulleys.
Each part of the clock moved according to simple regular scientific laws,
in isolation to the rest of the mechanism. The mechanism of the whole
clock could be explained in terms of the movements of its individual
parts.

Bradwardine and Buridan were, to my knowledge, the first people to
compare the workings of nature with a mechanical clock. At the time,
models of the solar system were being combined with the new clockwork
mechanisms to create systems which rotated automatically. It was not
difficult to extend this analogy; the mechanical models could mimic the
solar system, could not the real cause behind the solar system's motions
be analogous to the cogs and wheels that sat behind the face of the clock?
I would not
describe these early mathematical physicists as adherents of the
mechanical philosophy -- they were
still scholastics and very much Aristotelian in their world-view.
The clockwork universe was an analogy, not a reality.
But by suggesting that there were and
uncovering mathematical laws (not quite the right laws, but still a huge
step forward) they provided the basic groundwork that would be used to
develop the philosophy.

Now let us skip forward to the sixteenth century -- the time of
Descartes, Kepler, Galileo, and Hobbes. The high medieval period was
ended by the black death; the generations that followed were weakened, and
mostly lost interest in mathematical physics (although in a few places it
was still studied and preserved). The generation after that was the
Renaissance, which spurned all things medieval, including mathematical
physics. Take, for example, Francis Bacon (a clear example of Renaissance man)
who attacked the mathematicians
as much as he did the Aristotelians, claiming that they had made no
progress and would make no progress.

But not everyone ignored the medieval mathematicians. Galileo, Kepler and
Descartes were perhaps lucky to be in the right place at the right time.
They were probably the most naturally talented mathematicians of their
generation, and had been raised in the right places to be trained in the
medieval tradition of mathematical
physics. They knew the power of those methods, and the successes that
were made by the first generation of mathematical physics and people like
de Soto and
de Cusa
who built on the work in the intervening years. They were
surrounded by an intellectual culture that despised all
things Aristotelian. So it was perhaps natural for them to take the hints
found in Bradwardine and to try to turn it, in slightly different ways,
into a philosophy of nature.

There were two main philosophies which supplanted Aristotle's.
Empiricism, of whom Francis Bacon was an early forerunner, denied the
possibility of any theoretical knowledge but only that which could be
derived directly from observation. This found a strong following among
the non-scientific and non-mathematical philosophers, particularly in
Britain. But the
philosophy of the early scientists was mechanism. They believed that
the universe was ultimately governed by mechanical laws, and that it was
their responsibility to uncover precisely what those laws were. Of course,
experiment and observation was an essential part of the process; but the
belief was that the experimental philosophy's role was, rather than being
an end in itself, to provide evidence for the mechanical philosophy.
The empiricists denied that it was possible to know anything beyond direct
experimental data and the basic proofs of geometry. The mechanists, by
their success, proved them wrong.

So what was this mechanical philosophy? Fundamentally, the belief that
a complex being could be reduced to the sum of its parts, that each of
those parts evolved under regular and deterministic laws external to
themselves, and that the evolution of the individual parts was not
influenced by their place in the substance as a whole, but only their
local surroundings. When two large bodies interact with each other, it
was only individual parts which were directly affected by the collision.
The mechanical philosophy was also tied into the belief that the laws of
nature ought to be described mathematically.

That the laws are external to the particles is in sharp contrast to
Aristotle's belief that the evolution of matter can be described in
terms of the inherent tendencies or final causes of the beings. It is
an essential aspect of the nature of the acorn that it grows into an oak
tree, when placed in the right circumstances and not externally impeded.
Of course, it needs to draw in nutrients from outside itself to do so, but
the growth of the acorn is spurred on by its internal nature. (Of course,
this doesn't close down scientific discussion: one still has to identify
why the tendency to grow into an oak tree is manifested in the form of
an acorn, and this will require going into microscopic detail; but those
details will still lead us to form and finality). But, on the other hand,
in the mechanical philosophy, the acorn can be broken down to its
consistent atoms (for those many mechanists who were also atomists), and those
atoms act in given circumstances according to fixed laws independently of
whether or not they are part of an acorn, but the structure of the acorn
happens to be such that the effect of those laws acting on each of the
atoms taken together will give us an oak tree. The mechanist believes that
the motions of the individual atoms gives us the oak tree. The Aristotelian
(if he was an atomist, which historically few Aristotelians were)
believes that the atoms are absorbed into the larger structure and cannot
be treated as individuals.

There is, unfortunately, no one single mechanical philosophy (just as
there is no single empiricist or Aristotelian or idealist philosophy),
but rather the term describes a family of views which held a great deal
in common. [One of the most common mistakes I have seen in
contemporary philosophy is the
idea that every term needs to be defined precisely so that it refers to
one and only one distinct thing. Thus some people claim there is no such
thing as the scientific
method, because of the small differences in its application in different
fields and different times. However, it is useful to combine related things
into sets, and invent a term to describe that set. Thus while there may be
many different types of the scientific methodology, they nonetheless
all fall within the same class of approaches.] For example,
most mechanists were
atomists, but many (including Descartes himself) weren't. Descartes was
a dualist, splitting the cosmos into a mechanical world of extension and
a non-mechanical mental world (so that he could combine the idea of free
will with his mechanical physics); while others believed that mechanism
governed minds as well as bodies. Some (such as Descartes again) believed
that only contact interactions were allowed; others (such as Newton)
accepted action at a distance.

So this list of axioms of mechanism should not be thought of as absolute,
something that all advocates of the mechanical philosophy hold to. Rather,
it should be thought that mechanists will hold to most of these, or
something reasonably close to them. (For example, later mechanists would
say in effect that there are two different types of matter in the universe --
particles and fields.)

Space and time either are or can be represented by a geometrical space,
and the motions of physical beings can be fully expressed in terms of
this mathematical structure.

The only things that influence physics are matter, local motion, and perhaps
a small number of other properties such as size, texture, mass, and electric
charge. The variable state of the particle depends on and only on its
location and
velocity (or momentum). Size, texture, mass and so on are constants for
each particle, although there is no reason why two different particles
need have identical properties.

A large, composite object is made up of innumerable parts, and can be
thought of as solely the sum of these parts. Motions of the larger
object can be expressed solely can be reduced to a consideration of the
motion of the individual parts. These parts (which at the most fundamental
level were known at the time as atoms or corpuscles, although I call
them fundamental particles) themselves are indestructible,
and cannot be created or destroyed.

Every object is built up from different arrangements of these
fundamental parts, and this alone is sufficient to explain all the
phenomena we see around us.

These parts evolve under fixed, deterministic laws, which treat all
matter the same, depending only on their local circumstances. These
laws can be expressed mathematically, and we are capable of
understanding and uncovering them, in part through careful
experimentation.

The parts act independently of the rest of the substance, and that they
are arranged within a larger body makes no difference to their motions:
they only react to the immediately local surroundings.

Motion (i.e. local motion) continues with unchanged velocity
except when a force is
applied. This force could either (depending on your school of thought)
depend on

Collisions between particles alone; or

Both collisions between particles and interactions at a distance
between particles, perhaps mediated by electromagnetic and
gravitational fields.

The laws of physics might have been designed by God (or might not),
but operate independently of God. All God needed to do (if anything) was to
start the system in motion, sit back, and enjoy the show. Possibly
God occasionally intervenes in the system (gives it a little push
here or there), with such interventions known as miracles. However,
many mechanists would deny the possibility of miracles, either in
principle, or in practice, or as being superfluous and demeaning to God.

Formal and final causes are at best redundant, and at worst
are an ill-defined superstition, more harmful than helpful.

Form, which posits that complex substances each have their own identity,
contradicts the principle that matter can be reduced to the sum of its
parts. The notion of form states, for example, that a water molecule
cannot be analysed simply in terms of two hydrogen atoms and one
oxygen atom, and by considering their motions independently. Rather,
in a philosophy which accepts form, the energy levels of the atoms
combine to create something very different from the individual atoms.
The behaviour of what is left of the hydrogen atom within water is
thus very different from what we would expect from a single hydrogen
atom which happens to be stuck in the electromagnetic field emanating
from the other atoms. One cannot fully treat each atom within a
molecule in isolation. The mechanical philosophy would imply that one
could.

During the renaissance, final causality was confused with purpose, and
all proponents of the mechanical philosophy I am aware of repeated
this error. Since there is no purpose inherent within the laws of
motion, it was easy to see how they dismissed final causality
(although several early scientists used the concept that things were
designed for a purpose to their advantage, for example in early medical
studies or in developing the principle of least time or the principle
of least action). If we use the more
accurate definition of final causality as tendency towards an end,
then again the mechanist would regard this as redundant. Whatever
tendencies a particle has depend only on the laws of motion which
govern efficient causality. Because the system is deterministic, there
is no difference between efficient and final causality, except one
looks into the past and the other into the future. The idea of an
inherent final cause which differs from one form to another is
repellent to the mechanist. It would deny the idea that the laws are
external to matter.

The most important difference between theism and mechanism is that
theists (by definition) believe that God is active in sustaining and
upholding the universe. The laws of nature (in whatever other way we think
of them) are thus not independent of God, but a description of God's
activity in the universe. Thus the theist also cannot accept the mechanist
definition of a miracle. Miracles cannot be an intervention by God,
because the word "intervention" suggests that God is otherwise inactive.
Rather theists think of miracles as signs which directly show some
aspect of God's character. I, for example, would define a miracle as an
event which (when taking into account what happens elsewhere in similar
circumstances) provides evidence that God is not indifferent to mankind.
But there are other good definitions available which don't assume
mechanism. This is one of the reasons why theists find the standard
atheist arguments against the possibility of miracles unconvincing; those
arguments usually start with the mechanical definition of the miracle,
and thus either implicitly or explicitly assume a world-view similar in
at least some respects to mechanism. Theists reject the arguments in part
because they reject the philosophy of nature which those arguments assume.

Of course, it is possible to believe in the mechanical world view and also
the existence of God. Most of the early developers of the mechanical
philosophy were firm believers in God, and they developed it partly for
(mistaken, in my view) theological reasons. Such a perspective is known
as deism, and it
dominated intellectual life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
But it is clear that one cannot be both a mechanist and a theist.

However, it is clear that if one accepts the mechanical philosophy of
nature and the eternity of the universe (which science seemed to suggest
until the first direct evidence started coming in that the universe
wasn't eternal back in the 1920s), then it is an easy step to take to say
that God is redundant. There is no need to invoke God to start the system
if the system had no start. That leaves arguments from design and
arguments from miracles as the only possible arguments for God. Arguments
from miracles were dismissed by
(for example) supposing that it would be a sign of imperfection of God
if He designed a set of laws which required his intervention; or perhaps
by saying that given so much behaviour seems to be governed by the laws
of nature, that it is always far more likely that the witnesses to
miracles were mistaken or deluded than a violation of the laws occurred;
or perhaps by saying that what seem to us to be miracles are identified as
such because we have an incomplete knowledge of the laws of nature, and
if we knew them perfectly the apparent miracles could be explained
perfectly naturally. The theist has solid responses to each of these
arguments, but this isn't the place to go into those. It is enough to
say that many people found (and still do find) these arguments
convincing, and thus could immediately dismiss any miraculous testimony.

Thus the argument from design, which was never one of the traditional
arguments for God (Aquinas' teleological argument is very different) was
seen in the nineteenth century as the one good remaining argument for God.
Darwin's explanation (and its subsequent refinements) that apparent
design could be explained in terms of mechanical processes put the nail
into this argument. That the argument from design was last man standing
at the time
and knocked over by the revolution that birthed modern biology is perhaps
the reason why atheist biologists such as Richard Dawkins put so much
emphasis on it, and this was the main reason why they initially became
atheists. But, as already remarked, this argument depends on a prior
acceptance of the mechanical philosophy. No theist would accept this
argument for atheism, because theists don't believe that physics is or
can be independent of God. Darwin's theory should only drive one to
atheism if one were previously convinced that theism is false, and the
choice lies only between deism and atheism.

There is no question about the mechanical philosophy's historical
importance. It was the philosophy that drove the birth of modern science.
But how relevant is it today?

Among contemporary philosophers, perhaps not so much. Granted, I am no
philosopher, so perhaps I am not the best person to judge, but I would
say that the majority of philosophers today have moved on from mechanism.
The dominant philosophies today would be forms of idealism or empiricism
or maybe some form of existentialism, but there are, of course, some
mechanists, as well as a few accepting other philosophies such as
various forms of Aristotelian thought. Philosophers are aware of quantum
physics, and other issues with mechanism which emerge in the problems
of the mind, consciousness and epistemology, and have tended to move away
from the old-fashioned mechanical world view; basing their thoughts more
on the authorities of Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein, Quine, or others.

Among contemporary physicists, I would again say that there are very few
pure blooded mechanists who would accept the premises described above,
because of the "obvious" incompatibilities between the mechanical
philosophy and quantum physics. Some interpretations of quantum physics,
the Everett multi-world scenario being the most obvious, retain as much
of mechanism as possible; however most interpretations violate it in
significant ways. However, the majority of contemporary physicists don't
really care about philosophy. The death of the mechanical philosophy
destroyed their faith in philosophy, and they don't tend to think of
metaphysics as being of any use whatsoever.

However, among the general public, the mechanical philosophy is more
important. The physics learnt at school is mechanical physics; the
mechanical philosophy is then picked up implicitly from both these lessons
and the wider culture. I would say that contemporary biologists still adopt
a broadly mechanistic metaphysics; among the social sciences and
humanities perhaps even more so. In particular, the mechanical
scepticism of final, formal and miraculous causes is in epidemic
proportions in such areas. So even though the mechanical philosophy,
as defined according to the principles listed above,
is not so important in contemporary academic philosophy, it is still very
influential both in wider society and in the university culture.

Most of the premises of mechanism are, of course, in direct contradiction
to modern physics.

The first premise, that physics is mathematical and understandable,
of course, survives and is perhaps
stronger than ever today, as we find evermore applications of esoteric
branches of mathematics to physics.

The reduction of physics to
matter and local motion fails to the emergence of the quantum state, which is
parametrised
by energy and momentum. Electrons are different instances of the same type
of particle, which means that they must have the same rest mass, electric
charge and so on.

Matter doesn't reduce to the sum of its parts, but
compound objects are described by effective field theories whose creation
operators need not just be the combined creation operators of their parts,
and thus which have a topologically distinct set of energy bands.
Motions
in the compound object thus cannot be reduced to motions in the
individual
atoms, but we instead have to consider the energy bands of the substance
as a whole. Accidental arrangement of matter is not enough to explain
the properties of compounds. The fundamental particles are not
indestructible (and thus, nothing else is either). However, because of
the conservation of energy and momentum (which arises from the locality
of field theories), the principle of efficient
causality is maintained: nothing can come from nothing.

There are "laws" of some sort describing the evolution of matter,
but they are not
deterministic, and obviously of a very different nature to the laws of
classical physics. They can only be parametrised in terms of quantum
amplitudes (what I have been calling likelihoods). These laws describe
the various decays that each type of particle can undergo (and the
likelihood for each type of decay), and thus depend on the nature of the
type of particle involved. Thus the list of possible decays can,
in some ways, be thought
of as being inherent to matter rather than wholly external.

Interactions between particles is no longer thought of in terms of
forces and changes in velocity. Momentum is no longer linked to velocity
in the same way as in classical physics, but is merely a parameter
itemising the particle state. However, the Aristotelian principle of
causality still applies.

Form and finality are re-introduced into physics, and cannot be escaped.
Modern physicists use the same concepts (just call their analogues in
the mathematical representation by different names).

The idea of God starting off the laws and then sitting back is no
longer tenable because the concept of physical law has changed so much.

So the mathematicization of physics survives, but nothing else of the
mechanical philosophy. It is, or ought to be, utterly dead. Some of the
premises were killed by quantum mechanics (which adopted some principles
of the mechanical philosophy and other principles of the quantum philosophy,
to form what is ultimately an incoherent mess, philosophically speaking),
and most of the remaining premises (baring the one I have just mentioned)
by quantum field theory.

So that just leaves the question of God's relationship to the new physics.
Most physicists, and philosophers, have just retained the idea that the
laws of physics operate independently of God from the mechanical
philosophy, and done nothing with it. Of course, since by this time
(due in part to the influence of mechanism) I expect that they didn't
give the matter that much thought. But we have found the other axioms of
the mechanical philosophy wanting; why should we keep this one alone?
After all, it is easy to picture a mechanical clock operating
independently of the clockmaker. If the clockmaker was needed to
continually turn the handle, then it would have been a step back from
the sundials and water clocks which preceded it. But the clock picture
no longer stands. The universe is indeterminate, and at a fundamental
level.

The idea of the laws of physics are independent of God is ingrained into
our culture. It thus can be difficult for people to accept that there are
other, and maybe even better, ways of thinking about physics. It is an
assumption that rose as part of a world-view that we now know to have
failed. The assumption doesn't depend on that world-view; it can
survive the death of mechanism. But it is not the only option on the
table. It is an assumption, and without the mechanical philosophy, one
that lacks any rational foundation (unless we can find a new one).
But there are other approaches as consistent and maybe even more consistent
with modern physics. Many times I have encountered atheists so blinded by
their dogma and presumptions that I could not get any further than this.
But it is presumption; it is atheist dogma, and as such it ought to be
challenged (even if that challenge leaves us agreeing with the notion).

Probability is a parametrisation of uncertainty. Usually, we fall back
on giving a probabilistic answer when we don't know precisely all the
causes. Thus the invocation of probability (or likelihoods) is an
admission that not all the information we need is available to us.
If physics is inherently probabilistic, then that means that the
universe itself is not a complete system of information. Whatever is
needed to complete it exists outside the physical universe.

So when we have an electron happily sitting in an atomic energy
band, there is a certain likelihood that it will emit an photon and a
certain likelihood that it won't. That it is expressed in terms of
likelihoods means that there is uncertainty. That there is uncertainty
means that some information is missing. But where is this information?
It cannot be contained within the material universe, because that would
imply that quantum physics would rest on the foundations of a hidden variables
theory, which has been experimentally dis-proven. Thus the missing
information, that is the difference between the electron emitting and not
emitting, must exist outside the material universe. That is to say,
something immaterial. This something acts towards an end (namely
causing the electron to decay at that moment), so it possess a will. It
can distinguish between the concept of an electron and the concept of a
muon (since these have different rates and types of decay), so it
possesses an intellect, something capable of distinguishing between and
thus grasping abstract concepts. So we are talking about an immaterial mind.
Since it is immaterial, it must exist outside of space and time (since
if it were part of space and time, we could in principle map it into our geometrical
representation of reality, describe it physically, which means that no information
would be missing and physics deterministic again) thus
a timeless, and therefore eternal, and omnipresent mind. From the unity of
physics we
can deduce the unity of this mind; from its ability to influence the
decay of any particle in the universe we see that it is omnipotent, and
because it is "aware" of every particle in all places and times omniscient.
The timelessness means that it cannot itself undergo change (since time is
the measure of change), and thus can only exist in one actual state,
with no potential states. From this we deduce simplicity. It's immutability
implies that it cannot come into existence, and thus cannot by a nature have a cause.
So we have
one timeless, simple, uncausable, omnipotent, eternal, omnipresent,
omniscient, immaterial mind that is a cause of everything else. Sounds an
awful lot like the classical conception of God to me.

Of course, whether you accept this argument (or a more fully fleshed out
version of this argument) would depend on whether or not you accept the
hidden assumptions, most importantly that uncertainty in physics always
arises from an unknown cause (in my view, the hardest of the assumptions
to justify), and the various definitions of mind,
omnipotence, omniscience and so on which I have used but not
(here) stated. But if we do accept this argument, then it is clear that
God is not an innocent bystander to the universe, but actively involved at
every moment; while still respecting the final causes and nature of the
individual particles. Thus we are lead to neither extreme of deism nor
occasionalism, but theism.

Thus the mechanical understanding of God also seems to depend on its
premise that physics is deterministic. It is this God, a very different
beast from the God of theism, that atheists tend to object to. Which is
one reason why theists tend to find the standard atheist arguments
either irrelevant or risible.

The main question of whether science is compatible or incompatible with
theism or atheism boils down to whether the true philosophy of science
is consistent with whatever philosophy underlies that form of atheism or
theism. One historically dominant (maybe not so much today, at least among
academic atheists) philosophy behind atheism was the mechanical world view.
Atheists, accepting the sixteenth century confusion between this science and
the philosophy, believe it to be science that is in conflict with religion,
when it is in practice the philosophy.
They claim that mechanism is inconsistent with theism; I won't
dispute that. But they also need the premise that it is a workable
philosophy of physics. That idea, which seemed so certain back at the end
of the nineteenth century when atheism started to dominate academia, is
now untenable.

So classical theism survives, and that particular form of atheism is dead.

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